Sucre July 25th

TUESDAY 25th Sucre

Chocolate factory visit and Casa de la Libertad.

This morning we (six of us) took a public bus to visit the local chocolate factory, Para Ti.  We watched a video, were given a sample - yum, and then briefly walked along a corridor looking at photos and through glass windows at mostly idle equipment.  Luckily one window had two women filling moulds and then emptying them in order to create a chocolate layer in the mould prior to the next process.

Lindsey asked about fair trade and whether they paid the cacao growers enough and seemed to get an acceptable answer.  All the cacao that they use is grown in Bolivia in the lowlands near the amazon.  The indigenous growers are in a cooperative and are apparently paid appropriately.  An interesting side comment we heard was that the employees at the factory and their families all get dental cover as part of their employment package.  We wondered if that was because they got good discounts for the chocolate.  We finished up at the factory shop to buy some chocolate.  We bought some yummy bonbons, some Coca chocolate and some salted chocolate.

Back to town on the public bus and we got off early for Marisol to take Lindsey through an artisan market.  Lindsey has been looking for some cloth to recover one of our footstools and everything has either been too big or too small.  Today we found baby bear.  It was just right.  Purchase concluded and we walked back to the main square.

Sucre has a siesta time from 12:00 to 14:30.  Our next plan was to visit the main museum Casa de la Libertad which would reopen at 14:30.  

So, back to the hotel for a wee rest then off to a Saltenas cafe to feed me and then to the market for Lindsey to have some soup.

We arrived at the museum as it opened and then waited with some others from our tour group for an English speaking tour at 15:00.  These local tour guides leave a lot to be desired. I find that I'm only able to understand half of their "English" words.  They speak to fast, have a very thick accent and always seem to want to add some extra word or phrase at the end of each sentence.

Anyway I still found it of interest even though a lot of it went over my head.

Apparently Simon Bolivar and AJ (Antonio Jose) Sucre even though they were of Spanish heritage decided to liberate South America from the Spanish.  They worked their way down from Venezuela liberating countries as they went and Bolivia (the last country to be liberated) decided to name their country after one liberator and their capital city after the other.

Originally a Jesuit chapel, Bolivia their signed declaration of independence in this building in 1825.  Interestingly Bolivar and Sucre didn't sign it as they didn't want to influence the tribal chiefs in this way.

There are thirty odd signatures on this declaration.

There was a room set aside to an Argentinian woman who was also heavily involved in getting the Spanish to move on.

This museum was the actual parliament until the 1898.

Historic input over and done with for another day and we set about deciding where we were going to eat tonight.

We decided to return to Florin for dinner later so we then returned to our hotel to catch up with face time and emails.

Lindsey had my enchiladas tonight and I had pork ribs.  They were delicious. Lots of meat and very little rib bones.

Then back to the square to watch the break dancers performing again.  There were a couple of extra bods tonight so it was even more entertaining than last night.

In bed by 8.  Lights out by 9:30. Alarm set for 5am!

Sucre day 2 - 24 July

MONDAY 24th Sucre

A leisurely start to the day for a change.

After breakfast we walked seven blocks, the last two up a quite steep hill to a church that had a large square which afforded a great view over Sucre, the white city.

100m from here was a textile museum.  In general we aren't museum goers but Lindsey likes textiles so we gave it a go and once again we were pleasantly surprised at how interesting this one was.  It helped that we were each given an English guide book that translated all the descriptive panels.

The Andean people do some amazingly intricate weaving with very rudimentary tools.

Back down the hill we walked to visit the market.

I bought a Saltenas as I walked in and then we went to the Juice stalls.  Lindsey got talking to a young woman from Georgia (USA) who is on a scholarship in Santiago (Chile) who was visiting Sucre for a holiday.  She was eating the most delicious looking tower of fruit salad garnished with cream and caramel sauce and making use of her excellent Spanish we ordered one to share instead of getting the juice we first intended to buy.  It was delicious and the young woman was very interesting to talk to.

Once that was devoured we went upstairs to find a local specialty, sopa de mani, peanut soup.  The soups we've had on this trip have all been superb and this one was pretty good too.  We were ushered to a tiny table set for four and just after we received our soup two locals sat down with us to have the same soup.

They both prayed over their soup, giving thanks, before they ate.  We then tried to have some sort of conversation which was largely unsuccessful.  We were able to tell them where we were from and then Lindsey drew a wee map on a napkin to show the man that we had travelled from Lima via various places to here.  He was quite taken with all this and then showed his wife recounting our travels to her in Spanish.

After lunch we set out to find the two geocaches in Sucre.

The first one was in Parque Bolivar.  Quite a large park with an enclosed dinosaur themed park for children and a ghastly orange (Eiffel) tower in the middle of the main park.

A quick find and then a 1.5 km walk to the main cemetery.  The cemetery is actually listed as a tourist attraction because of its park like settings.  It is well manicured.  Students come to sit on park benches here to read.  There are some huge mausoleums just inside the entranceway and then further on there are graves stacked one on top of the other above ground in long rows.  They go about eight or ten high.  We discovered later that they are only allowed to reside here for three years.  They are then cremated free of charge to make room for new arrivals.  If you want the ashes which you have to pay for there is no guarantee that someone else's ashes won't be mixed up with your loved ones.  Nobody gets cremated straight up as it is too expensive for them.

Cemetery visited.  Cache found and we walked back to the hotel for a siesta.

Dinner just the two of us again.  This time at a restaurant/pub called Florin.  No English speaking staff here tonight.  The attraction was that they advertised themselves as a micro brewery.  They brew four different varieties of beer but unfortunately only one type at a time.  The beer this week was a wheat beer which I don't particularly like.  Luckily they had some more interesting bottled beer brewed in Cochabamba.  So I had a strong beer 7.2% followed by an IPA.  Lindsey enjoyed the wheat beer.  The food was good too.  Lindsey had a moussaka and I had enchiladas. I have no idea where the aubergine came from as we haven't seen any in the markets.

Dining complete and back to the main square for our evening ritual of people watching.  To our surprise there was a group of young men at the base of the central statue practicing their break dancing.  They were really good and entertaining.  Their strength amazed us.  They were doing acrobatics on their hands with their legs flying through the air just like we would see gymnasts doing on a pommel horse at the Olympics.

That allowed an enjoyable hour to go by before returning to the hotel for the night.

Sucre day 1 - 23 July

SUNDAY 23rd arrive Sucre by bus

We checked into our hotel and then went out to a restaurant for breakfast as a group.

Nice food. Quite pricey.

Marisol then took us on an orientation walk.

Bolivia seems to have two of everything. Two capital cities and two national flags.

Sucre used to be THE capital until there was a bit of a ruckus from the folks in La Paz.

All the governmental power moved to La Paz however the judicial power remained in Sucre.  Therefore we were shown the high court building and a street where every second shingle said Abrogado (lawyer). If it wasn't for the judiciary and the university Sucre wouldn't be much.  The only industries are a cement works and tourism.

After lunch we went as a group to a Dinosaur Park. Lindsey and I weren't holding out much hope that we would have much interest in this but we went anyway.  We had to be there for a one o'clock tour to get up and close to a dinosaur footprint.  We were expecting some glassed in viewing to see a print.  How wrong we were.

It was absolutely amazing.  It is part of the cement works. When the company was removing limestone from the quarry they encountered an area where the limestone was mixed with magnesium and so stopped quarrying.  There is this huge near vertical wall that then revealed hundreds of clearly discernible footprints from four different dinosaur species.  It turns out that this cliff was originally flat ground and part of a swamp before the Nazca Plate pushed under the South American Plate causing this flat ground to now be near vertical.

Some tracks of prints run for about 200m diagonally across the face.

We walked down into the quarry, wearing hard hats, and walked along the cliff face within touching distance of the prints.  There were ones with three pointed toes, ones with three rounded toes, ones with four rounded toes and one that had big round feet like an elephant.

It was very hot in the quarry.

Back to the hotel for a siesta, then a wander around town and dinner at a cafe.  The manager of the cafe is Dutch and is a bit of a traveller.  He worked at Franz Joseph as a guide for more than two years.  The food was good and afterwards we walked to the town square to watch the world go by for nearly an hour.

La Paz and overnight bus to Sucre 22 July

SATURDAY 22nd La Paz & overnight bus to Sucre

Valle de Luna

Five of us went with our guide by public bus to "Moon Valley".

It is a place that has limestone stalagmites due to erosion. It covers many hectares.

It turned out to be a bit ho hum but the main attraction was that I got to do an Earth Cache.  We saw a couple of Vaspachas which are a cross between a large rabbit and a squirrel.

Valle de la Luna 

Amy and Paul with us.

They joined the trip in La Paz.

Amy is from Dublin and Paul is from Sydney.

The main entertainment for me are the bus rides. For Bob 2.5 (NZ50c) you can go for miles. Most of the buses are Toyota Hiace vans but there are a few a big old Dodge buses.

We returned to La Paz central and went to the market.  The Bolivians (and Peruvians) seem to have their main meal at lunchtime.  We had fried chicken (always dry) with rice and a mixture of potato and carrot followed by a really nice soup all for Bob14, less than 3 kiwi.

We walked the streets for a bit and returned to the hotel.

We had checked out before our morning trip and now retrieved our bags and set up camp in the hotel lobby while we waited for our transfer to the bus station.

Our overnight bus (12 hours) departed at 7pm for Sucre. 

Another double decker bus with three seats across. These were the best yet. Fully reclinable into a flat bed without disturbing the people seated behind.

Unfortunately we had been warned that the bus may not have a toilet and Lindsey was very worried about how she would survive overnight.  It turned out that the bus did have a toilet but it was kept locked.  So apart from some offical toilet stops if we needed extra, which Lindsey did, she had to let the driver know.  He would stop and she had to squat beside the buses rear wheel.  Not very satisfactory.  Lindsey had a sleepless night, of course, worrying about how long she could hold things together before the next organised stop.  So our first Bolivian bus experience was different! We have two more shorter trips ahead of us in Bolivia before two long ones in Argentina.  Hopefully the Argentinian buses are better.

We arrived in Sucre around 7am and caught a bus transfer to our hotel.

La Paz Friday 21 July

FRIDAY 21st La Paz

Lindsey had mentioned to our guide last night at dinner that we wanted to go geocaching to Muello de Diablo, the devils tooth and needed some advice on how best to get there.

She said that she hadn't been there for many years and would like to come too. Bonus.

The three of us walked out of the hotel and the next thing I know Marisol has waved down a van and we were off. The roads are full of these vans and up until now I hadn't realised that they are all private buses. 2.50 Bob to go pretty well anywhere.  They have collective groups and so they do operate specific routes and work to a very loose timetable.

We got off at San Miguel which is about 10km south of the city centre.

The geocache is a Multi so we had to find a four digit number on a modern church in order to solve the final coordinates for the cache.

Once that was done Marisol hailed a taxi and a rapid Spanish conversation ensued. She turned to us and said 80 Bob?  Lindsey said 60 and the driver said si.

Off up the hill we went.  Quite steep and the road deteriorated as we went.  From bitumen to rock, like paving stones, to dirt and quite a few hair pin bends.  We eventually arrived at a small rural community and the driver dropped us off by the school.  We had about 1km left to walk towards Muello de Diablo towering above us.

A very nice uphill walk with a bit of a scramble at the end and there was the cache.  Last found in January.  Marisol was intrigued, asked lots of questions and is now initiated into geocaching.

Log book and trinkets in hand.

Once the hide was replaced we walked on up to a view point and took some photos.

The devils tooth with La Paz in the distance.

The gateway to the community that lives in the shadow of Muello de Diablo.

As luck would have it a taxi appeared and dropped some passengers off.  We grabbed it and for 20 Bob we were taken halfway down the hill to the bus (van) terminus.  We hopped into a waiting van which took us all the way back to the city centre.

Nearing midday now so Marisol took us to a "fast food" restaurant that sold a local Bolivian specialty called Saltenas.  Similar to Empanada but with more filling and juicier.  She told us that McDonalds tried La Paz out for a year and then closed down.  They were too expensive and the Andean fast food is cheaper and healthier.  Burger King is still surviving with one restaurant but is never busy.

After our snack we said goodbye to Marisol and headed out to collect two more geocaches.  The first one was 15 minutes away in a scruffy park on the side of a hill frequented by young couples whose only interest was to play tonsil hockey.

A quick find and sign and then we walked onto an aerial walkway which wormed its way up the hill to a saddle.  Great views and from the saddle we could look down into another valley suburb of La Paz and we saw where their major football stadium was.  In the background was another 6000m mountain in all its glory. Stunning.

We were trying to get to the next cache in an adjacent park but walking up this hill which was a minor navigational error as all the park entrances up this way were blocked off.

So back down we went to an entrance where there were several small astro turf football fields for people to play five or six a side.  We watched a few moves as we walked past.  They were pretty good.  Eventually we got to GZ and set about looking for the cache.  Lindsey spotted it in a rock wall and unfortunately it had slipped down into a crevice. 20 minutes later with the aid of several sticks Lindsey managed to extract the tube.

Mission accomplished so it was time to walk the two or so kilometres back to the hotel.

In the evening we were our guides guinea pigs. She took us to a restaurant that she hadn't tried before.  It wasn't a winner. In fact it was a rip off.  Service was slow and the meals were small and expensive.

In bed by ten for our last night in La Paz.

Puno to La Paz, Bolivia 20 July

THURSDAY 20th Puno to La Paz, Bolivia.

Lindsey had a bad night. Her altitude sickness isn't great.  She is worrying that we still have another six or seven of the next ten days at above 3500m.

We beat the 5:30 alarm by getting up at 5:15.

Packed and went down to reception where the Internet is better.

Breakfast began at 6:00 and we left in our mini bus for the main bus station at 6:30.

The bus was on time and we filled the lake edge for two hours to reach the border town of Desaguadero.

We got off the bus and our Peruvian guide introduced us to our Bolivian guide.  Her name is Marisol.

We said our goodbyes to Luis and then received instructions from Marisol.

We had been joking with Luis that he would be catching the "chicken" bus back to Cusco but it appears because of continuing disruptions from the teachers that he couldn't even do that.  His latest arrangements were to catch a contraband truck via a back road to avoid the disruptions.

We found the customs arrangements at Desaguadero hilarious.  The bus dropped us off and we queued on the footpath for about half an hour and then walked into a building where two officials were on duty.  Showed our passport which was stamped with an exit stamp and then we walked out an adjacent door back onto the same footpath.  Our guide had been waiting outside for us.  Then as a group we walked 200m over a bridge and queued up for 45 minutes this time on another footpath.

While waiting it was no problem to pop across the road to a toilet or to do a bit of Bolivian shopping.  Finally we got to enter the building that we were queuing for where two more officials were on duty.  This time we got to hand over a declaration saying that we had nothing to declare and had our passports stamped again

Two hours later we were able to reclaim our seats on our bus and continue to La Paz.

La Paz has a population of about one million, however there is an adjacent city called El Alto that has a similar population and appears to be the dormitory for the less wealthy who work in La Paz.

Three hours after leaving the border we arrived at the La Paz bus station.

Our first impression is that La Paz makes Wellington look flat.  The city is in a hilly valley with houses clinging to every part of every hillside.  The drop from El Alto, which is on the flat at over 4200m, to La Paz is about 600m.

We boarded a transfer bus to our hotel and then discovered how chaotic La Paz traffic is.  Bumper to bumper with nobody prepared to give way and "Hiace buses" just stop anywhere to pick up and drop off, but somehow it works.

Checked in at a little before 4pm to be given an internal shoebox of a room which we were later to discover was also freezing.  The hotel doesn't have any heating.

Twenty minutes later the group met for an orientation walk of central La Paz.

We walked down a steep street full of touristy shops to a plaza then across the valley and up a less steep street to a pedestrian only street.  As we hadn't had any lunch our guide took us to an empanada shop where Lindsey and I had a beef empanada to stop the tummy rumbling.  We then continued to Murillo plaza to see the parliament building on one side, the presidents officers on another and surely there was a Catholic Church on a third side but I cannot remember.

We walked back down to the valley and were shown the main market and then walked up towards our hotel and visited a part of the "witches" market.  Any herbal remedy is available that you could imagine and plenty one wouldn't be 

able to imagine.  Many shops had Llama foetuses hanging at their doorways.

We returned to the hotel briefly and then went to dinner as a group. This would be the last night for seven of our group.  The Canadian Russians head back to Toronto tomorrow. The two 60 yr old nurses head to Santiago for four days before going home to Sydney and the two Brisbane teachers are off to the Iguasio falls and then to Rio.  One then goes home to Queensland while the other goes to Colombia to meet up with her daughter.

Dinner was good. I had a llama steak.  It was delicious. It was the size of my plate but very thin and tasted like veal.  Lindsey had a chicken curry which she enjoyed.

Hugs and farewells after dinner and we were in bed with all our clothes on by 10pm.

Llachon Lake Titicaca to Puno

WEDNESDAY 19th Llachon to floating islands to Puno

Up at 6:30. A beautiful cloudless day and minus 5 temperature.

Magdalene provided us with a lovely breakfast. A pancake each, a boiled egg and homemade fried bread.

We went up the back with Herman to see their livestock pen as he had to feed a lamb.  They have 15 sheep, two burros, a chicken and a calf.  I don't know where the cow is.  Real subsistence farming.  

 

Then we got to meet their son Edison (15). He is already taller than his father.

At 7:45 we walked down to the jetty to catch our boat back to Puno.

Fond farewells. Everyone in our group seemed to have had a great time.  Having been quite anxious yesterday about this homestay I came away feeling really pleased that we got to experience it.  It could well be one of the highlights of our trip.

The added bonus is that my Spanish vocabulary has probably doubled overnight.  It's now reached double figures :)

Back on our slow boat and two hours later we arrived at the floating islands.

There's a whole city living on islands made of reeds.  Hard for us to get our head around this existence.  The island we landed at was about the size of our house.  Five families live here.  They have a small hole in the reeds that they throw a fishing line down.  The water level is only about a foot below the reed platform.  The houses are built another metre above the platform.  They do have solar power.  They drink the lake water which is still quite salty at about 25% the salinity of sea water.

Tourism is their main source of income.  Every island had a boat full of punters visiting just like us.  They have a reed boat that they take tourists on for a wee ride for ten Sol per person.  Lindsey and I had seen enough after about ten minutes.

Eventually we were all back on board our launch and thirty minutes later we were back in Puno.

Checked back into our hotel and had some rest and iPad time.  Lindsey is not feeling great with the effects of the altitude.  This is our second day at 3900 to 4100 metres.

Tomorrow we drop by about 250m to La Paz so hopefully she will feel better.

After our rest we made a 2km return walk for a fruitless geocaching search.

Tonight is our last night in Peru so the group went out to dinner together.

A really nice restaurant, good service and great food.  Lindsey had a Peruvian specialty, deep fried guinea pig.  I had charcoal chicken.

The reason that we went to this restaurant was because a stage show was included at no extra cost.  It was amazing.  They were all students.  The "band" consisted of a group of five young men. Two guitarists a drummer and the other two plated a variety of Andean flutes, like panned flutes, and small woodwind instruments like recorders but there was no mouthpiece. The "flute" sat just below their lower lip and they blew over it.  Then there were maybe ten dancers although no more than six were on stage at any time.  They wore different costumes for each regional dance they performed.  All costumes were in bright Peruvian colours.  Some with masks, some with huge hats.  I particularly liked a dance where two men became Condors and challenged each other around the dance floor.

Our tour guide leaves us at the Bolivian border tomorrow so tonight was a farewell to him as well.

Back to the hotel around ten. Alarm set for 5:30.